Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/70

 Riehl's studies of the natural history of German life, in which the author gives at once her theory of the function of the novelist and her general agreement with Riehl on the psychology of the peasants who were to form the main subjects of her novels. Other essays in this volume are similarly interesting,, owing to the light they throw on her religious views. Two of them—on the poet Young and on Dr. Cumming—deal with the chief moral defects she had found in the religion in which she had been brought up. In the former she deals with the Divine Policeman theory of virtue, which was so favoured by Voltaire and was the chief argument formerly used to defend the immortality of the soul. It is impossible to mistake the personal tone of the following protest against this theory:—

'We can imagine the man who "denies his soul immortal" replying, "It is quite possible that you would be a knave, and love yourself alone, if it were not for your belief in immortality; but you are not to force upon me what would result from your own utter want of moral emotion. I am just and honest, not because I expect to live in another world, but because, having felt the pain of injustice and dishonesty towards myself, I have a fellow-feeling with other men, who would suffer the same pain if I were unjust or dis-